Civil Service

Civil service is a relatively new term used to describe an old governmental feature that is becoming increasingly important in modern political systems. The phrase was first used in British administration in India and was popularized by Sir Charles Trevelyan a little more than a century ago. When the principle of open competitive examination was introduced in Great Britain in 1854, the phrase “civil service” was also carried over and was applied to the officials serving the state in a professional capacity, except for those in the military and judicial services. Of course, equivalent bodies of officials have served states throughout history, long before the term “civil service” was applied to them.

Civil service is not a precise concept. It is similar to, but not identical in meaning with, other terms, such as public service and public bureaucracy. Although it has the advantage of familiarity, there are several difficulties in its use. Perhaps the chief difficulty is the distinction built into the term between the civil and military segments of the public service. In some governments this dividing line is becoming blurred and the interrelationships between civil and military services are growing more intimate, especially in the newly independent nations.

The definition does place emphasis on the professional character of the service as against work performed for the state on a sporadic, voluntary, or forced basis. As used in Great Britain, and to a certain degree elsewhere, the term “civil service” refers to officials serving the central government or its agencies rather than local units of government. Even when “civil service” is considered to include officials in local units, it is customary to exclude teachers, despite the large number of people engaged in this government-supported profession. The term itself does not specify conditions as to professional preparation, methods of recruitment, social and economic origins, or other crucial matters, but it is now customarily associated with a merit system, as contrasted with a patronage system, and with a service open to all citizens on the basis of talent and proved capacity.

Despite the vagueness in accepted definition and variations in its usage, “civil service” does identify the expanding corps of trained manpower that must be maintained by every modern polity to carry out governmental functions. The trend is world-wide, despite differences in cultural, political, historical, geographic, and other factors, for the scope and range of these governmental functions appear to be increasing. The result is usually described by such terms as “welfare state,” “administrative state,” and “big government.” Inevitably, the civil service plays a crucial role in the operation of modern governmental systems, whether in Western or non-Western states, in countries in the communist or noncommunist blocs, and in developed or developing nations. In all of them, the civil service is the core of modern government, growing in its power position vis-à-vis other political organs and therefore posing grave problems of control and accountability. At the same time that its contributions have become more essential, the question of the proper placement of the civil service in the governmental system has grown more difficult. While the external relationships of the civil service have been changing, its internal characteristics have also been modified in ways that transcend differences in the political systems generally. A consistent trend is that the proportion of the total work force that is encompassed by the civil service has been growing in most countries. Another is that the requirements of the civil service call for the services of a constantly expanding variety of occupational and technical specialists, representing all or most of those available in the society. These developments, in turn, have led to a trend toward professionalization among civil servants that affects their attitudes and behavior in ways that are significant both for the conduct of civil service activities and in the relationships of the civil service with other political groupings.

Certain requisites can be identified for the establishment and maintenance of any civil service system. Some kind of legal basis for the system must be provided. This may be largely customary and uncodified; it may take the form of ministerial regulations, as in Great Britain; or it may be set forth in considerable detail in a written constitution for the political jurisdiction, as is the case in Michigan and some other American states. More likely, it will have a statutory base, either in an elaborate civil service code, such as has existed in Germany for many years, or in a collection of civil service laws adopted at intervals and probably revealing some internal inconsistencies, as in the national civil service in the United States.

Another common feature is provision for a personnel agency or agencies charged with responsibility for maintenance of the system. The British practice, which has influenced arrangements in many other countries, is to divide this task between the Civil Service Commission, which is concerned solely with the selection of entrants into the service, and the Treasury, which is the central control agency in other personnel matters. Many countries with a British administrative tradition have adopted this bifurcated system, with selection functions assigned to a civil service or public service commission and other personnel functions usually allocated to the home or finance ministry. In the United States, the preference has been to set up a semiautonomous civil service commission with combined responsibility for supervision of all aspects of personnel management, although in recent years there has been some inclination to confine the independent commission to quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions and to assign most personnel functions to a staff agency responsible to the chief executive. The Continental tradition has been to avoid a full-fledged central personnel agency and rely upon each ministry or department to carry out its own personnel program within the framework of uniform civil service legislation. However, France abandoned this approach after World War II and created the Direction de la Fonction Publique, or Civil Service Directorate, to initiate reforms in civil service policy and exercise personnel controls over the various ministries. Whether or not there is a central personnel agency for the civil service system as a whole, the primary departments or ministries and their major subdivisions require specialized personnel units.

A developed civil service system calls for the installation of well-established procedures for the conduct of common personnel transactions, such as selection, promotion, compensation, performance evaluation, discipline, and separation. These standardized methods are intended to provide objectivity in the choice of entrants to the civil service from citizens who compete and to provide equity in treatment for those who already belong to the service.

The system must also provide status guaranties and establish canons of conduct for civil servants. Achievement of such qualities as competence and continuity in the civil service rests upon some assurances to the public servant that his status will be protected, provided he observes the standards of conduct that have been set for him. The social position of civil servants varies from country to country. The Continental tradition, as in Germany and France, is for the higher civil servant to consider himself as a representative of the sovereign state and to expect considerable deference and respect. In Great Britain and the United States, there is more of a tendency to regard the official as a servant of the public, with a consequent reluctance to confer special status or privileges. An imbalance in either direction can cause difficulties. In the first case, the civil servant may be tempted to take advantage of the situation by an elaboration of prerogatives and safeguards, which stresses bureaucratic self-interest rather than the public interest. In the second, the prestige of the civil service may be too low to attract sufficient talent.

Finally, the role of the civil service must be defined in the political system generally. The universal expectation is that the civil service should be neutral in the sense that it is loyal to the basic political order in the state but at the same time is amenable to shifts in political leadership from time to time. Devices for trying to achieve this vary a great deal from country to country, but responsiveness by the administrative staff to the directives of political leaders is an objective commonly sought, even among political regimes that differ greatly in other respects.

Modern civil service systems are largely the products of developments in western Europe, with European patterns then being exported to, or copied by, nations in other parts of the world. In turn, European practices can be traced to historical antecedents in medieval and ancient times. China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome have all contributed something to present-day public administration, but Roman law and Roman administrative institutions have exerted by far the greatest influence. The Roman Empire provided legal principles and the rudiments of an administrative structure that have carried over into modern times.

The emergence of the civil service from ancient and medieval antecedents has been accurately described as a gradual transformation of the royal household into the public service. This occurred earliest and progressed furthest in Europe, particularly in Prussia and in France, where absolute monarchies laid the basis for centralized and professionalized bureaucracies. In Prussia, as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, Frederick William, the great elector of Brandenburg, had succeeded in uprooting feudal administration and creating an efficient administrative organization staffed by trained civil servants selected on a competitive basis. The eighteenth-century Prussian civil service is considered to be the first of the modern civil service systems, and the scientific study of government administration received much attention and formed the basis for training officials. In France, a parallel but weaker development of the administration under the monarchy gave way to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic administrative reforms, which replaced the king with the nation and converted the royal service into the public service. The Napoleonic administrative features of rationality, hierarchy, and competence became models for reform in other countries in Europe and later elsewhere. The Prussian and French systems of administration and civil service, despite their differences, can be grouped together as the European pattern, which continues to be one of the strongest and most influential. This pattern emphasizes the role of the civil servant as the agent of the state, the professionalized and career nature of membership in the civil service, the importance of safeguards to civil service status and tenure, and the crucial contribution of the civil service to continuity in the administration of state affairs.

Great Britain developed another influential pattern of civil service. Administrative evolution was slower, however, because political struggles turned more on issues of parliamentary versus royal ascendancy and of safeguarding individual liberties against the claims of political authority. Although the administrative apparatus became increasingly complex, it continued to be staffed primarily from the aristocracy on a patronage basis and without much regard to administrative efficiency, until the drastic reform measures that were taken in the middle of the nineteenth century. The TrevelyanNorthcote report of 1854 led the following year to the order-in-council that established the Civil Service Commission and laid the basis for civil service reform. The objectives were to abolish patronage, to admit candidates into the service at prescribed ages and through competitive examinations appropriate for the class of civil servant being recruited, and to stress the selection of outstanding Oxford and Cambridge graduates in the classics, history, science, and mathematics for appointment to the higher administrative class. The main features then adopted have been retained and have earned for the British civil service a deserved reputation for combining talent, integrity, and political responsiveness.

In the United States, civil service reform came later and took a somewhat different direction, although it was strongly influenced by the British experience. The patronage system was closely tied to political parties and resulted in frequent rotation in office as party control changed. The price of the “spoils system,” in terms of administrative performance, was as a result higher than it had been in Great Britain. Following the Civil War, a civil service reform movement gathered momentum that led in 1883 to passage of the Pendleton Act at the national level and to subsequent reforms in state and local units of government, although substantial segments of the American civil service at these levels continue even today to be operated in the spoils system tradition. The United States civil service tends to reflect characteristics of the governmental system and social system generally. As a consequence, features include considerable mobility of personnel, recruitment on a position rather than a career basis, practical tests rather than examinations stressing broad cultural attainments, a relatively low prestige ranking for membership in the public service, and quasi independence for the central personnel agency. However, there are noticeable changes under way in all these areas, and the tendency seems to be for the American civil service to become more like the British, rather than for the differences between them to increase.

In the Soviet Union and other communist countries, the environment in which public employment exists is so markedly different that to make comparisons with other civil service systems is difficult. The scope of public administration is nearly allinclusive, and the state has almost a monopoly on employment. The party is dominant in the operation of the administrative apparatus, and the line between party bureaucracy and state bureaucracy is hard to draw except in formal terms. Administration is carried on in a highly political context, and control agencies over administration have proliferated. For the ambitious young person, a choice between public and private employment is not possible since a career in the state service is the only career available.

Nevertheless, the Soviet civil service exhibits many operating characteristics common to bureaucracies everywhere, and methods have been developed in the Soviet Union as elsewhere for maintaining and controlling the personnel system. The main agency responsible for personnel policy and practices is the Central Establishments Administration in the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Finance, with subordinate agencies in the republics. These are not recruiting bodies, however. Employment is the responsibility of the various ministries and agencies. Each sector has its own schools and institutes, and recruitment and placement are closely tied in with the educational system, with graduates of the training schools obligated to serve for a prescribed period in assigned posts. Civil service examinations are not given, nor are panels of candidates provided for appointment. Job evaluation and description are apparently well developed, with wage scales attached to job categories but with variations according to the qualifications of the incumbents. The civil servant is protected from dismissal by a code similar to those in other countries, and an elaborate grievance procedure has been established by law. Within the strict limitations imposed by the political system on choice of career and job mobility, opportunities for advancement are provided for those who can demonstrate loyalty and talent, and the bureaucratic elite enjoys a privileged position in Soviet society.

A number of recurrent issues have had to be dealt with by most civil service systems. These issues continue to be subject to controversy in regard to principle and subject to variation in practical operations. Some of the most important ones will be discussed briefly.

A central problem is that of selection of qualified personnel for the civil service. Even where competitive selection based on demonstrated competence is accepted as the proper approach, there are sharp differences as to how this should be done. The preference both on the Continent and in England has been to recruit graduates of educational institutions at an early age and on a career basis and, after a period of probation, arrange for the systematic advancement of those whose performance warrants promotion. The selection process is closely geared to the educational system, although there may be different views as to what kind of educational preparation is most appropriate for the future higher civil servant. The historical inclination in the United States, on the other hand, has been to keep opportunities open for entry into the service at all levels, rather than to require a career choice at the time of graduation, and to emphasize training that is closely related to the professional or technical specialty required on the job.

Nonmerit considerations continue to affect selection in numerous ways. In countries such as the United States, with its spoils background and a multiplicity of governmental jurisdictions, political party affiliation sometimes may still be decisive. In European countries, recruitment may be largely confined, as a matter of practice, to candidates from middle and upper social and economic groups rather than carried out on a basis that is more representative of the whole populace. All countries impose some standards of political loyalty. In communist countries, this identification with the ruling party becomes a primary consideration, although there is considerable evidence that professional qualifications receive increasing attention in choosing from among those meeting the political requirements. In developing countries where the supply of qualified manpower falls far short of existing and foreseeable needs, there is a tendency to overstress education as shown by degrees held and to relate placement in the civil service almost exclusively to this factor rather than to capacity to perform the work of the government.

Another common dilemma is how to make arrangements for status and for pay within the service. A complex modern bureaucracy must have a method for relating officials to one another in some systematic way. By far the most common system is one that utilizes a small number of broad classes within the service and then assigns ranks to the civil servants in each of these categories. Both Great Britain and France have four such general classes common to the ministries and departments, with the division based on clearly defined standards of education and training and with only limited movement upward from one category to another. The status of the civil servant is determined by his rank and the class to which he belongs, rather than by the particular assignment that he has at any given time. He is considered as primarily a member of a corps of career officials, rather than as the occupant of a particular position. There are indications that the rank system has advantages that make it more attractive to many of the newly independent states.

A contrasting approach is used in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and a few other countries influenced by American practice. Here the basic element in the civil service structure is the position, which is defined as a cluster of duties and responsibilities calling for the services of an individual. The position held determines status in such a duties classsification system, and similar positions are grouped into classes of positions, the occupants of which receive common treatment in matters of selection, pay, and so forth. These two systems are not mutually exclusive, however, and in many countries are employed together in various combinations.

Adequate compensation for civil servants, particularly in the higher categories, is essential to attract and hold qualified people. Only a few countries have succeeded in maintaining such pay levels and other perquisites. The best record has been made in the well-established and prestigious career services of western Europe. In the United States, compensation levels are competitive in the lower and middle levels but are grossly inadequate for the higher administrative, professional, and technical positions. In most of the developing countries, low salary scales are a major factor in explaining prevalent conditions of petty corruption, overstaffing, and low production.

The setting of suitable standards of conduct for civil servants is another common problem area in all systems. As an agent of the state, and in return for tenure and other guarantees, the civil servant is usually subjected to special regulations on matters such as the ethical standards he is expected to observe, the extent of permissible union activity, and participation in political life. Ethical norms in the civil service reflect, of course, the ethics of the society as a whole and vary widely from culture to culture [seeEthics]. The general expectation is that the public servant should more than meet the standards prevalent in the community, and this is reflected in civil service regulations even where it is not achieved in practice. Integrity of behavior is part of the tradition in well-established civil service systems, such as the British system. In contrast, laxity in ethics often is a major problem in some developing countries, where temptation is great and administrative self-control is lower.

Organized activity by civil servants to negotiate with the state as employer is ordinarily accepted but frequently is restricted to a narrower compass than in the private sector. Officially sponsored machinery for joint consultation between management and staff has often been provided, the most successful example being the Whitley councils set up in Great Britain after World War I and copied elsewhere. But the usual channel is civil service unionism. In most countries, the right of association in unions has been established and with it the right of civil service unions to affiliate with the general trade union movement, but resort to the strike as a weapon by civil servants is not normally accepted, and in several countries, including the United States, it is expressly forbidden by law.

Policy concerning the political rights of civil servants is not uniform. Some European countries impose hardly any restrictions, even allowing the civil servant to serve in legislative bodies, including the national parliament, although with varying provisions concerning his civil service status while in office. Great Britain categorizes civil servants according to their policy-making functions and the public sensitivity of their duties and has a differential policy that frees a large proportion of civil servants for normal political activities and prohibits others only from membership in the House of Commons. The United States has a much more restrictive approach, with national legislation barring not only most civil servants in the national government but also state and local officials paid from federal funds from active participation in political management and in political campaigns. Most local governmental units with merit systems impose similar limitations on their civil servants.

The relationship of the civil service to other instrumentalities of government and to outside interest groups is a topic of concern in any political system. In the Western democracies, the role of the bureaucracy is fairly well defined and the problem is essentially one of maintaining an existing balance, which has been worked out over a long period of time. Despite apprehension in some quarters that the civil service has gained undue policy-making power, the principle that the career officials must be responsive to political leadership is clearly recognized. In the communist countries, the monolithic nature of the political system leaves no doubt as to the subservient position of the state bureaucracy, although as these polities mature, the bureaucracy may be able to build up a more influential role and protect it in competition with other power centers.

The most interesting current question has to do with the place of the career public service in the newly independent developing countries. Ordinarily in these nations the civil service has been the most fully matured governmental institution at the time of independence. Particularly in former British colonies such as India, Pakistan, and Nigeria, a strong civil service had already been built up, including native as well as expatriate officials. This undoubtedly has facilitated the transition to self-government, but it also has caused concern as to the long-run prospects for democratic development in the Western pattern. The reasons include an alleged carry-over from the colonial period of attitudes of superiority and disdain toward the public and a preoccupation with law and order considerations rather than with programs of economic development and social welfare. But the main argument is that the professionalization and expansion of the civil service has outpaced the growth of executive, legislative, and judicial organs of government, not to mention the development of interest groups in the private sector. This has led some to advocate a deliberate slowdown in further improvements of the public service until the rest of the political system has had a chance to catch up. Despite the superficial appeal of this thesis, it probably reflects an overoptimistic view of the adequacy of most transitional bureaucracies to meet the extraordinary demands pressed upon them, and it rests on what is still an unproved assumption that relatively weak bureaucratic institutions will give other political institutions a better chance to grow. At any rate, it is evident that the career civil service occupies a position of crucial importance in determining the political future of the non-Western developing countries.

Both past and present literature on civil service reflects the stages through which contemporary civil service systems have evolved. Emphasis will be placed on American sources because they are most voluminous, as well as representative of what has been done in other countries.

After the middle of the nineteenth century, when systematic attention was first given to civil service issues, the initial concern was almost exclusively with a reform or “fight the spoilsmen” approach. The movement had the twin objectives of cleaning up politics and improving the quality of administration, and the British model was advocated with modifications to fit the American circumstances. The writings of those involved in the reform movement were highly significant in the accomplishment of civil service reforms.

After merit systems had been widely adopted, attention shifted to personnel management as a technical specialty, with concentration after the turn of the century on such subjects as examination techniques, position classification, promotion criteria, performance rating, employee relations, and organization for personnel administration. Personnel work became a professional field of specialization with its own standards and criteria for judging performance. A parallel development was the linkage between personnel administration in public and private employment, with interchange of techniques based on the assumption that there were no fundamental differences between the two spheres.

In recent years a dominant theme, which began in the late 1920s and early 1930s and is usually associated with the “Hawthorne experiments” conducted at the Western Electric Company, has been to give special attention to human relations aspects of civil service operations and to apply findings from sociopsychological research to the relationships between productivity and motivation, smallgroup behavior, and supervisory practices. This led to a marked reorientation of personnel programs toward more emphasis on factors affecting work performance and relatively less emphasis on selection, status, and separation processes.

Notable current trends, which give every indication of continuing, include sociological studies of civil services as bureaucratic systems; reconsideration of public policies concerning such controversial matters as civil service unionism, political activity, and ethical standards; and increasing attention to problems of civil service contributions to the future development of the developing nations. All of these interests have encouraged the pursuit of comparative studies between public and private sectors of administration within nations and across national boundaries among civil service systems. These are healthy tendencies that should lead to a better understanding and to the future improvement of the civil service in diverse political settings.

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Civil Service

Dictionary of American History
COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc.

CIVIL SERVICE

CIVIL SERVICE, the term applied to the appointed civilian employees of a governmental unit, as distinct from elected officials and military personnel. Increasingly, most civil service systems in the United States are characterized by a merit system of employment based on technical expertise, as determined by competitive examinations, and on permanent tenure and nonpartisanship. A few positions in the federal civil service and many more in state and local governments are filled by employees who owe their appointments primarily to political considerations. Such employees and the offices that they fill are known as the patronage, and the appointment mechanism is known as the spoils system. Much of the history of the U.S. civil service has had to do with its transformation from a spoils system to a predominantly merit system—a struggle spanning more than a hundred years and still going on in some state and local jurisdictions.

Under President George Washington and his successors through John Quincy Adams, the federal civil service was stable and characterized by relative competence and efficiency. However, the increasingly strong pressures of Jacksonian egalitarian democracy after 1829 rudely adjusted the civil service of the founding fathers, and for more than a half-century the federal, state, and local services were largely governed by a spoils system that gave little or no consideration to competence.

The unprecedented corruption and scandals of the post–Civil War era generated the beginnings of modern civil service reform. Anact of 1871 authorized the president to utilize examinations in the appointing process, and President Ulysses S. Grant appointed the first U.S. Civil Service Commission in that year. But Congress refused appropriations; full statutory support for reform waited until 1883 and the passage of the Pendleton Act, which is still the federal government's central civil service law. This act reestablished the Civil Service Commission, created a modern merit system for many offices, and authorized the president to expand this system. Behind the reforms of the late 19th century lay the efforts of the National Civil Service League, supported by public reaction against the corruption of the times. Successive presidents, requiring more and more professional expertise to carry out congressional mandates, continued and consolidated the reform—notably Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover. By 1900 the proportion of the federal civil service under the merit system reached nearly 60 percent; by 1930 it had exceeded 80 percent.

The depression period of the 1930s saw both a near doubling of the federal civil service and some renaissance of patronage politics, especially in the administration of work relief. With public and congressional support during his second term, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was empowered to, and did, expand the competitive system to most positions in the new agencies. Moreover, Congress extended a version of the merit system to first-, second-, and third-class postmasters; federal agencies were all required to have personnel offices; the Tennessee Valley Authority, under a special merit system statute, commenced to pioneer in government-employee labor relations; and pay-and position-classification systems were improved.

After World War II, federal personnel management, which had formerly consisted mainly of administering examinations and policing the patronage, further expanded its functions. The operation of personnel management was largely delegated to well-staffed personnel offices of agencies. Improved pay and fringe benefits, training and executive development, a positive search for first-rate talent, new approaches to performance rating, equal employment opportunity, improved ethical standards, loyalty and security procedures, incentive systems, and special programs for the handicapped were major developments. These developments and a full-scale labor relations system based on a precedent-shattering executive order by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 have characterized the transformation of nineteenth-century merit system notions into public personnel management as advanced as that anywhere in the world. In a federal civil service of 3 million, there are fewer than 15,000 patronage posts of any consequence.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, civil service reform came also to many state and local governments, although relatively more slowly and less completely. In 1883 New York State adopted the first state civil service act and was followed almost immediately by Massachusetts. By 1940 one-third of the states had comprehensive merit systems; by 1970 two-thirds had them. The reform spread, from the East, through cities as well, after several New York State and Massachusetts cities set up civil service commissions in the 1880s. Chicago followed in 1895. Most metropolitan centers and many of the smaller cities have modern merit systems. A few have systems for police and fire departments only. Most cities act under their own statutes, but in New York, Ohio, and New Jersey, there is general coverage of local jurisdictions by state constitutional or other state legal provision. In one-quarter of the states—notable among which is California—the state personnel agencies may perform technical services for localities on a reimbursement basis. Whereas a bipartisan civil service commission provides administrative leader-ship in most jurisdictions, the single personnel director is becoming more popular.

The most important twentieth-century developments in civil service have to do with federal-state cooperative personnel arrangements. In part, such arrangements stem from a 1939 amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935, which required the federal government to apply merit system procedures to certain state and local employees paid in whole or in part through grants-in-aid. A considerable number of similar statutes followed, so that by the 1970s perhaps a million state and local positions fell within personnel systems closely monitored by the federal government. Federal supervision was for many years managed by a bureau of the Social Security Administration and later by a division of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Intergovernment Personnel Act of 1970, signed by President Richard M. Nixonon 5 January 1971, relocated the supervision of grant-in-aid employees within the U.S. Civil Service Commission. But, equally important, this act authorized federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments in support of modern personnel systems within these jurisdictions. The function of handling these grants-in-aid is also with the U.S. Civil Service Commission. Thus, it has become the central personnel agency not only of the federal government but also, in many respects, of the entire intergovernmental system.

In size, the federal civil service has grown from an institution of a few hundred employees in 1789 to nearly 3 million. During major wars the federal civil service has doubled and even quadrupled; its peak occurred in 1945 when civil service employees numbered nearly 4 million. There has been a similar growth instate and local services. The federal civil service saw its greatest continuing expansion between 1930 and 1950; progressive expansion of state and local civil service rosters began in the late 1940s, when state and local governments started on the road to becoming the fastest growing segment of American enterprise, public or private. By the 1970s federal civil employees functioned almost entirely under merit system procedures, as did some 75 percent of those in state and local governments. Civil service reform is therefore nearly an accomplished fact in the United States, but budget cuts in the 1980s and 1990s have created a serious strain on the civil service's efforts to fulfill its duties. Critics of the civil service have described its members as out of-touch "government bureaucrats" who put their own narrow interests ahead of those of the American people. In an effort to reduce the size of the government, such critics have proposed and implemented significant reductions in the civil service budget. In light of such policies, civil service officers at both the state and federal levels face the challenge of meeting growing obligations with declining resources.

Notwithstanding budget concerns, civil service re-form in the United States has produced a uniquely open system, in contrast to the closed career system common to other nations—which one enters only at a relatively early age and remains within for a lifetime, in the manner associated in the United States mainly with a military career. The Pendleton Act of 1883 established this original approach, providing that the federal service would be open to persons of any age who could pass job-oriented examinations. Persons may move in and out of public service, from government to private industry and back again, through a process known as lateral entry. It is this openness to anyone who can pass an examination, this constant availability of lateral entry, that has set the tone and character of public service in the United States at all levels. One consequence of U.S. civil service policy has been to provide a notable route for upward mobility, especially for women and blacks. Thus, the U.S. civil service has reflected the open, mobile nature of American society and, in turn, has done much to support it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In graham, Patricia W. The State of the Higher Civil Service after Reform: Britain, Canada, and the United States. Paris: OECD, 1999.

Johnson, Ronald N. The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy: The Economics and Politics of Institutional Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Schultz, David A. The Politics of Civil Service Reform. New York: P. Lang, 1998.

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civil service

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

civil service, entire body of those employed in the civil administration as distinct from the military and excluding elected officials. The term was used in designating the British administration of India, and its first application elsewhere was in 1854 in England. Modern civil service personnel are usually chosen by examination and promoted on the basis of merit ratings. In democratic nations recruitment and advancement procedures are designed to divorce the civil service from political patronage.

History

General Development

The use of competitive examinations to select civil officials was begun in China during the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), and expanded to include all important positions during the Sung dynasty (960–1279; see Chinese examination system). In the West, however, selection of civil administrators and staff on the basis of merit examinations is a late development. Despite important contributions to administrative structure and procedure, the Roman Empire seems to have recruited and promoted officials largely on the basis of custom and the judgement of superiors.

The establishment of the modern civil service is closely associated with the decline of feudalism and the growth of national autocratic states. In Prussia, as early as the mid-17th cent., Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, created an efficient civil administration staffed by civil servants chosen on a competitive basis. In France similar reforms preceded the Revolution, and they were the basis for the Napoleonic reforms that transformed the royal service into the civil service. Development of a professional civil service came several decades later in Great Britain and the United States.

In the United States

Owing doubtless in part to the spoils system so strongly established in the Jacksonian era, the United States lagged far behind other nations in standards of civil service competence and probity. Agitation for reform began shortly after the Civil War. In 1871, Congress authorized the President to prescribe regulations for admission to public service and to appoint the Civil Service Commission, which lasted only a few years. The scandals of President Grant's administration lent weight to the arguments of reformers George W. Curtis, Dorman B. Eaton, and Carl Schurz. President Hayes favored reform and began to use competitive examinations as a basis for appointment to office.

The assassination of President Garfield in 1881 by a disappointed office seeker precipitated the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, reestablishing the Civil Service Commission after a nine-year lapse. The commission draws up the rules governing examinations for those positions that Congress places in the classified civil service. All Presidents since Cleveland have expanded the classified list, and the great majority of federal employees during peacetime are now classified. In 1939 the merit system was extended to sections of state administration receiving federal grants. The Hatch Act of 1940 forbade campaign contributions by officeholders, with the intention of divorcing the civil service from politics. A 1993 revision of the act allows most civil servants to engage in political activity on their own time.

Appointive power is shared by the President, who appoints the heads of all government departments and may remove his appointees at will; by Congress, which controls its own employees; and by the Civil Service Commission and departmental-appointing officers, in whose charge are vacancies in the classified service. Important changes were made in the structure of the U.S. civil service as a result of the reports issued (1949, 1955) by the two commissions known as the Hoover Commission. The organization of the government bureaucracy was streamlined by the creation of the General Services Administration, combining the operations and activities of some 60 government agencies.

In Other Countries

Of the world's civil services, the most outstanding on several counts is still the British, extremely powerful because of its permanency, its extensive grants of power from Parliament, and its reputation for absolute honesty, although it is criticized for a lack of flexibility and for class exclusiveness in its upper ranges. A Civil Service Commission and the beginnings of a system of competitive examinations were established in Great Britain in 1855, and the influential Whitley Councils, representing both government employees and administrators in questions dealing with service conditions, were set up after World War II. British civil servants are strictly excluded from politics. In Communist nations, on the other hand, the official party and the civil service have tended to interpenetrate. The secretariat of the League of Nations and of the United Nations are possible precursors of an international civil service.

Bibliography

See W. A. Robson, The Civil Service in Britain and France (1956); P. Van Riper, History of the United States Civil Service (1958); E. A. Kracke, The Civil Service in Britain and France (1968); F. C. Mosher, Democracy and the Public Service (1968); A. Gartner et al., ed., Public Service Employment (1973).

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civil service

civil service. Despite repeated campaigns to reduce numbers, the civil service remains one of the great growth areas of modern Britain. In the 17th cent. the civil service—i.e. persons directly employed by the government—was tiny. The royal household, it is true, numbered some 2,000 persons, but that included 210 Yeomen of the Guard, 55 gentlemen pensioners, together with cooks and porters, who were not civil servants in the modern sense. The two secretaries of state had a staff of about fifteen—four clerks of the signet, a French and a Latin secretary, a German translator, and between four and eight junior clerks. There was no career structure, posts were filled by patronage, and remuneration was by fees rather than salary. When the two secretaries of state were divided into foreign and home in 1782, the Home Office began with two under-secretaries, a chief clerk, ten other clerks, and some domestic staff. The Rockinghams began, and Pitt continued, a campaign of economical reform, and sinecures were snipped away, but the persistent warfare from 1793 led to further increases in numbers, particularly in the revenue and in naval administration.

The growth of the civil service in the 19th cent. was steady and moderate and hardly kept pace with the rise in population. In 1815 there were 25,000 civil servants; 39,000 by 1851; 54,000 by 1871; and 79,000 by 1891. Some reforms were introduced piecemeal by departments. In the Treasury, North had launched the concept of promotion by merit (1776), Shelburne had inaugurated fixed salaries (1782), and in 1805 an assistant secretary was appointed, the forerunner of the permanent secretary. A comprehensive review waited for the Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854, which recommended a division of labour between graduate policy-makers and humble administrators; entry by competitive examination; transfer between departments; and promotion by merit based on assessment. The proposals were implemented piecemeal, though a Civil Service Commission, to supervise recruitment, was set up at once in 1855.

The vast expansion of the civil service in the 20th cent. is not easy to calculate, since definitions are troublesome and one commentator has referred to the ‘statistical conjuring tricks’—e.g. recategorizing thousands of civil servants—to give the impression that numbers are falling. The biggest growth has been in welfare and education services, beginning in the first decade of the century. By 1939 the numbers had risen to 387,000 and by 1979 to 730,000. These developments were accompanied by further reports. Haldane in 1918 was concerned that senior civil servants had little time to think, though the proposals were modest. Plowden in 1961 complained that the Treasury had no adequate system for forecasting or controlling expenditure—a rather worrying observation—and the Fulton Committee in 1968 deplored the survival of the cult of the amateur gentleman, the generalist, and called for the expert or specialist: ‘the cult is obsolete at all levels.’ One consequence was the establishment of a Civil Service College in 1970 to conduct research and training.

Among other criticisms, it has often been suggested that the senior civil servants really run things and can frustrate the plans of all but the most determined of ministers—a view reinforced by the popular television series Yes, Minister. Generalization in so wide and imprecise an area is hard, but an equally cogent view is that the upper civil service has been too subservient to party whims and ideologies—what is sometimes known as the ‘grovel factor’. Neutrality of the civil service is a concept readily conceded, but practice is more difficult, and the line between warning and frustrating, concurring and encouraging, is not easy to establish.

Though the public image of the civil servant may remain a pin-striped bowler-hatted Whitehall mandarin, most civil servants work outside London and half of them are women. Of the non-industrial civil service, the large employers are the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Social Security, the Board of Inland Revenue, the Department of Education and Employment, the Department of the Environment, the Home Office, and Customs and Excise.

J. A. Cannon

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Civil Service

West's Encyclopedia of American Law
COPYRIGHT 2005 The Gale Group, Inc.

CIVIL SERVICE

The designation given to government employment for which a person qualifies on the basis of merit rather than political patronage or personal favor.

Civil service employees, often called civil servants or public employees, work in a variety of fields such as teaching, sanitation, health care, management, and administration for the federal, state, or local government. Legislatures establish basic prerequisites for employment such as compliance with minimal age and educational requirements and residency laws. Employees enjoy job security, promotion and educational opportunities, comprehensive medical insurance coverage, and pension and other benefits often not provided in comparable positions in private employment.

Most civil service positions are filled from lists of applicants who are rated in descending order of their passing scores on competitive civil service examinations. Such examinations are written tests designed to measure objectively a person's aptitude to perform a job. They are open to the general public upon the completion and filing of the necessary forms. Promotional competitive examinations screen eligible employees for job advancement. Veterans of the armed services may be given hiring preference, usually in the form of extra points added to their examination scores, depending upon the nature and duration of their service. Applicants may also be required to pass a medical examination and more specialized tests that relate directly to the performance of a designated job. Once hired, an employee may have to take an oath to execute his job in good faith and in accordance with the law.

Unlike workers in private employment, civil service employees may be prohibited from certain acts that would compromise their position as servants of the government and the general public. For example, the federal hatch act (5 U.S.C.A. § 7324 et seq. [1887]) makes participation by federal, state, and local civil service employees in designated public electoral and political activities unlawful.

The U.S. Civil Service Commission, created by Congress in 1883 and reorganized under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C.A. § 1101 et seq.) as the merit systems protection board, established a merit system for federal employment and governs various aspects of such employment, such as job classification, tenure, pay, training, employee relations, equal opportunity, pensions, and health and life insurance. Most states have comparable bodies for the regulation of state and local civil service employment.

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civil service

civil service Administrative establishment for carrying on the work of government. In the UK, the modern service was developed between 1780 and 1870, as the weight of parliamentary business became too heavy for ministers to attend to both policy-making and departmental administration. The Treasury got its first permanent secretary in 1805, the Colonial Office a permanent official in 1825. The two main divisions of the civil service are the Home and Diplomatic services. Since 1968 the civil service has been controlled by the Prime Minister (as minister of the civil service), but day-to-day management is undertaken by the Lord Privy Seal. In 1981 the Secretary to the Cabinet was made Head of the Home Civil Service. In 1996 the Senior Civil Service was created. The UK civil service has grown away from its centre in Whitehall, London, and now has many regional offices. In 1998, there were c.468,180 permanent civil servants in the UK. In the USA, the civil service evolved from the ineffective ‘spoils system’ (1828) established during Andrew Jackson's presidency, whereby posts were given as rewards for political support. This system remained in place until the Pendleton Act (1883) created the Civil Service Commission. The Commission created a merit system, and following the Hatch Acts (1939, 1940), federal employees can no longer play an active role in party politics.

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Civil Service School (Ottoman)

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group, Inc.

CIVIL SERVICE SCHOOL (OTTOMAN)

established to train civil servants to administer the ottoman state of the mid-nineteenth century.

Established on 12 February 1859, the Civil Service School (Turkish, Mektebi-i Mülkiye) of the Ottoman Empire trained administrators in accordance with the new Tanzimat reforms. (The term mülkiye refers to the civilian—the nonmilitary and nonreligious—branches of government.)

The school offered courses in humanities, social sciences, and foreign languages, as well as special courses on public administration. In 1877, the curriculum was expanded and modernized. The first graduating class had 33 members; by 1885, there were 393. Graduates often filled the provincial posts of qaʾimmaqam (district governor). In 1935, the name was changed to School of Political Science; as the Faculty of Political Science, it is now located in Turkey's capital, Ankara.

see also
tanzimat.

Bibliography

Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3d edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Shaw, Stanford, and Shaw, Ezel Kural. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976–1977.

David Waldner

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